This is one of about a hundred old posts I never published, though have been lately so people have shit to read while I focus on other stuff for a bit.

     This isn’t really a resentment, more like a momentary annoyance, but it’s interesting to go through the 4th Column in an effort to shed some light on the human condition, so to speak, or rather, the addict condition. The other day I got a call from some guy I know in recovery and I guess he had called previously and my voicemail was messed up, which is apparently a MAJOR RED FLAG. Lmfao. Anyway, then he texts me the next day asking if I’m still okay (i.e. sober).

     So in case you were wondering, if my voicemail is fucked up and it takes me more than 7 hours to reply, it means I’ve completely lost my mind, relapsed and destroyed everything, and I’m most likely about to jump off the Tobin bridge in a psychotic fit of despair.

     Anyway, let’s go through this just to see why it would annoy me at all.

1st Column (name of person, institution or principle we resent): Recovery guy.
 

2nd Column (specific resentment towards that person etc.): a. Asked me if I’m “okay”.  

3rd Column (part or parts of me the resentment affects): P/A (Pride/Ambition)

4th Column (how I was self-seeking, selfish, dishonest and fearful): 

*Self-Seeking: I want to be seen as recovered, solid as a rock. 

*Selfish: I want to text the guy back “of course I’m fucking okay you half wit” just to feed my pride/ego and self-esteem, and because I want people to see me as okay or enlightened.

*Dishonest: I’m making it about me when the guy is probably just being nice as opposed to jerking off to the possibility of me failing, which is of course the first thing that popped into my demented head.

*Fear: I fear a lack of approval. I fear people talking about me and starting all sorts of bullshit rumors.

     The truth is I don’t really care anymore about rumors and what people say. In fact, writing this blog alone has put a few rocks in my gut. But this is a fear I used to be almost crippled by, so my annoyance was no doubt triggered by my past, where my reputation preceded me, where rumors and gossip used to fly, which made me angry, depressed, insecure, you name it…

     “My Creator, I am now willing that You should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to You and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do Your bidding. Amen.” – Alcoholics Anonymous, p.76

P.S. So you know what I did? I didn’t call him back at all so he’d purposely think I wasn’t okay, just to prove how stupid it is to imply that I’m somehow not okay because my voicemail isn’t working. Mature, I know, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Plus I’ve been known to mess with people from time to time. Sorry, my bad.

Comment:

I’ve been reading your blog having learned about you from The Gardener’s Cottage. How would you describe the God you/other addicts need in order to recover? I work with addicts…

Response:

Lol. Forgive me, and no offense at all, but it sounds as though you are assuming that God is some sort of man-made concept or idea, one of many, that we use to somehow recover. Sure mankind, because we are so limited, tries to conceive of God and reduce God to some academic concept, but this has nothing to do with God. God is/was before any of us. God is Power. How would you describe power? Just the fact that we can have this conversation is the result of divine Intelligence and Power. And just as cause and effect is not an idea but a universal law, so is God also not an idea but simply truth.
 
I suppose if you want to understand God on some sort of practical level, then establishing a relationship with God can be equated with establishing a relationship with one’s conscience. Growing spiritually occurs when we develop, listen to, and act on our conscience. The more unselfish action we take, the closer we get to the source. Humility is essential for an addict for the very thing that keeps him sick is his refusal to get underneath anything. He worships nothing but himself and the world and his intellect, and rejects the natural fact that God is more powerful than any of his or her worldly faculties.

 
A good sponsor will hook another addict up to God (Power) and then get out of the way. This can be done by guiding an addict through the spiritual actions of the Twelve Steps, and I’m sure there are other ways as well. Doctors and classroom-trained clinicians etc. are quite powerless to help addicts in any sort of real or lasting way, in my view. I’ve never seen a true addict work with a non-addict and recover in any meaningful way. It is only recovered addicts who are filled with spirit and who can effectively carry this message that are capable of opening this door for another addict, whereas atheist clinicians with no direct experience as an addict in the real world cannot. For me, addiction is just so clearly a spiritual problem.
 
And this is off-topic, but most intellectuals do not believe in God, or rather, they are disconnected from themselves, because a) they’ve had no direct experience with the spiritual realm, and b) they are blinded by their own intellectualism and what they think they know. Thinking we know something and that everybody who disagrees with us is wrong is quite delusional, if you ask me. And yes, I am willing to be wrong, too, and I am willing to re-learn what I thought I knew. However, I know my experience pretty well, and therefore I understand addiction and recovery pretty well.
 
At any rate, there is nothing worldly that can fix an addict and restore him or her to sanity. I would know because I am recovered from addiction and all chemical/mental illness, and nothing earthly can be credited for doing that. It happened instantaneously as a result taking a set of actions based on spiritual principles. And believe me, I tried everything under the sun and couldn’t produce a mere percentage point of real change.
 
We have to do our part. We have to do the work. No therapist or pill can fix us. While I’m sure somebody will throw some scientific study at me to try to disprove this, in the real world, it doesn’t matter because science has never been able to restore an addict’s mind to sanity or restore his body such that it begins to react normally to alcohol once again. Once he crosses that line, there is no coming back, physically speaking. But hey, I always tell my sponsees, feel free to go try if you don’t believe me (unless maybe your thing is speedballing into your aortic valve;-)

New Comment:

Charlie everything you speak of here is true for the people who love addicts too. It wasn’t until I began to realize that I was not having any luck whatsoever with trying to heal my son and finally finally turning that job over to God that I began to see improvements in my life. It is heartbreakingly hard to do and feels so wrong as a parent but it must be done to save our lives and if they ever are to have a shot at saving theirs. Us letting go is essential and knowing that God is in control has been the only answer for me. So really it’s the same for all of us. :) Again, thank you for your tireless work here. x

Also see, God Isn’t a Concept.

Comment:

Charlie, I have a question about this post. You say it is crucial to not cave on an ultimatum. This is a simple concept if the addict is continuing to use unabated – but what if they have cut back severely on their habit, and say they are trying really hard to stop entirely? If they say it has been harder to quit completely than they expected, Should a partner still follow through if the addict is sober most of the time but still using occasionally?

Response:

I hate to say it, but when it comes to recovery, there are no grey areas. There is no such thing as ‘kind of’ okay or ‘partially recovered’. An addict is either completely okay or not at all. Whether we use all the time or occasionally, our internal predicament is still the same. That is my experience.

 
Abstinence shouldn’t be a struggle, and if it is, there is something very wrong with his or her program, as it has not or is not lifting the mental obsession. Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t buy what he or she is selling. An addict in occasional relapse is someone who is still insane, and in my view, cannot be trusted.
 
When an addict’s obsession is lifted, it is accompanied by a complete internal change, which includes the very character of an addict and so forth. Therefore, an addict who still uses at times hasn’t undergone any significant changes and is essentially the same person. 

P.S. I should mention, however, that while there is no grey area when it comes to using drugs and alcohol, once sober we can certainly be at various stages in the removal of our character defects. This is quite normal, as healing and spiritual growth is very much a process, one that we begin to manifest over time through consistent right action. So nobody is a saint and that is normal and actually quite healthy. We are meant to work hard day after day to see real changes occur and to build a foundation that is solid and will last.

Comment:

Hi Charlie, I’m the anon at the top of the comments. I laugh when I read my comment now. 3 days out of detox he relapsed. He stole $20 out of my wallet and shot up. He confessed that night and according to him all the AA people are super proud of him for confessing so fast. What they don’t know is the 8 prior years of this revolving door of relapse/recovery. actually i don’t think it should even be called a relapse if there is no significant clean time involved. So here I am tonight…weary to say the least. He is going to one or 2 meetings a day and pretty much “taking it easy” (his words) in between. He’s tired although he hasn’t worked in months. I’m on the brink of insanity and yet….I still find it hard to let go.

Response:

Thanks again for sharing/reaching out and for your honesty. I would’ve been the one guy in the AA meeting who wasn’t congratulating him, although I don’t exactly have a history of congratulating addicts for getting better. This is why I write this blog, because of the ever-expanding cavern between the two programs of AA that exist today – the bullshit version and the real one.

 
As is so painfully evident, physical sobriety isn’t a solution, just as detox isn’t treatment but a mere clinical procedure that contains 0% treatment or recovery. If we don’t go from detox to treatment, we are walking straight back to nowhere, i.e. failure, i.e relapse. Sorry to hear about this… and I totally agree with you about your assessment of what constitutes clean time/relapse.
 
I usually look at sponsees who relapse and calmly say something like, “Well, it’s obvious that you don’t want to change. Call me when you’re ready to get better and I’ll drive you to treatment and then from there to sober living for like two years. Otherwise, don’t call me.” I know letting go is brutal and I don’t claim to have the strength to do so myself, but I will continue to repeat myself by saying that there is nobody more full of shit than an addict, except maybe a politician or a central banker.

     So yes, I realize that some people hate me, especially some of the knuckleheads in AA. It doesn’t stop me or even bother me (given the people who saved me were the ones who told me what I didn’t want to hear), but let’s have a little counter reason/rant just for some fun. The latest nonsense I heard was when a friend of mine mentioned ‘the privileged addict’ to someone at a meeting near Boston and he said something like, “I hate that guy! He stole the Twelve Steps! He profits off recovery! He sells his stupid book! He makes money!”

     For the occasional imbecile who doesn’t read or think too much, most writers make nothing, despite the hundreds and hundreds of hours of painstaking work they engage in to think, write and edit a manuscript. For The Privileged Addict, I also spent months trying to collect actual police reports, hospital records and so forth to authenticate my experience, especially given both the saturation and the fraud in the addiction memoir market. So don’t worry, brother, the book didn’t just appear out of thin air. I actually had to spend a few minutes doing something.

     Anyway, most decent people admire those who have the passion, the courage, the talent and the willingness to sacrifice and open themselves in an effort to share something valuable with the world. But, needless to say, it is typical for a braindead alcoholic to have no gratitude, to have envy, and to have nothing to offer themselves. Those who are self-loathing failures are those who rip apart the abilities and the success of others. However, the dim and the boring have their story too, and so if some must fail to see that this is nothing but community service, let me reassure them that this free blog contains over 500 posts, including huge portions of all three books, and cover everything I have learned from my experience.

     Finally, I haven’t stolen anything. I don’t even know what that means. The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m actually trying to help point people towards the Big Book and the Twelve Step program of spiritual action contained within. Nobody is stealing anything, so relax. He reminds me of the dude who became enraged and foamed at the mouth when I began reading the Big Book in my old Brookline Chp. 2 meeting. The question you should be asking yourself is, what are you doing besides whining, moaning and complaining? What are you doing to help? And where is your family in all of this sober bitterness and anger that you take to your meetings?

     Oh, and what’s up with the marxist brainwashing? Do you have something against a guy using his brain to make money to support his family? Do you want to come by and redistribute the stuff in my garage? Let’s not forget that envy, my friend, i.e. wanting or taking someone else’s money, is no different than any other kind of discrimination. It is immoral and violates the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods), but hey, come by if you want. I’m sure we can find you a nice little pile of free stuff :)

     Welcome to Offended America, folks. Bye bye free speech and the rest of the Bill of Rights.

     The way to grow is to do the very thing we are scared to do.

     Why is it that alcoholics and drug addicts can’t ever seem to kick the habit for good? Why do they stay sick for so long? Sure it’s because they are stubborn, obstinate, self-absorbed children. But it can be summed up in one word: fear. We are cowards, and therefore we are scared shitless to recover, as that would actually require some (gulp) work.

     Addicts refuse at all costs to step out of their comfort zones. Anything difficult or uncomfortable they avoid like the plague. The truth is that we refuse to become adults. We cannot accept that life might not be solely about us feeling good all of the time. We cannot deal with the fact that life might be tough sometimes, that we might have bad days, feel sad or self-conscious or depressed. We simply cannot fathom the idea of living life on life’s terms. If life does not suit us, we drink or use. We do whatever we have to do to maintain our comfort… like a child who wants a candy bar even if mommy can’t afford it. We will whine and shout and even begin to hurt ourselves until we get it.

     Getting better is really quite simple. It is just doing that which we fear. We do all of those things that addicts hate doing – admitting when we are wrong, being accountable and responsible for ourselves and our addiction, thinking about others once in a while, taking care of our families, and going to work even when we are tired and don’t want to, just like every other human being. Guess what? Other people actually get up and go to work even when they’re having bad days. They don’t need to get jammed out of their skull just to get in the shower in the morning or get plastered as soon as they punch out.

     We get better by walking through our fears. We face the embarrassing character defects that we have amassed. We admit them and discover the healthier way. We become accountable for our harmful behavior towards others. We come to understand that we are not the most amazing things in the world, that we alone cannot fix ourselves. We consider humility, and get underneath something for the first time ever. We accept help from others… and most importantly, from God.

     Growing simply requires we do that which all other humans have to do, and we don’t complain about it. By acting like adults, we will magically find that we don’t need to shoot heroin, sniff a pile of coke, smoke meth, or drink like a pig just to get in or out of bed. By walking through fear we melt away cowardice… and we become free men and women.

God, please rid me of the poison of cowardice…

Comment:

Hello – I just found your blog and I am thankful for it. Does POA stand for Parent Of an Addict? I feel so lost – my son is very young and I can’t help but feel that there is something I can do to encourage him to live a sober life. The previous blog posts you mention are very helpful. My son is still in high school and has put us through so much pain and heartache the past year. He has had several bouts of 3 months of sobriety in the past year, and has tried AA, but is not committed to continuing the program. We have been looking at Practical Recovery as an alternative. He of course does not want to do anything, but my husband and I can’t sit back and continue like this. He just wants to be a “normal teenager” and he pretty much has been coming and going and doing as he pleases. Mostly it pleases him to come home during the week, but come the weekend it pleases him to be obstinate and difficult. He is prone to run away and has even told us that he is fine with living homeless. All because he can’t follow our house rules. We have drawn a line in the sand and are insisting that he abstain from smoking pot and drinking. His dad has said it’s a zero tolerance policy. I just want him to finish high school. I am so lost. Your post on How Not To Help an Addict really resonated with me. I ordered your book on Saturday and look forward to reading it. Thank you for your blog posts.

 
Response:

God bless you and thank you for reading and reaching out about your son. POA does indeed stand for Parent Of [an] Addict. I can’t tell you what to do but I do believe that ultimately there is nothing anybody can do to stop an addict. He will only change when he becomes willing to change. However, I have seen some stubborn types reluctantly go to treatment and get hit by something along the way, so anything is possible.
 
That said, what I would do is simply tell him that you love him and that what he is doing is killing you and breaking your heart, and also that if he continues using, he will experience indescribable suffering and depression down the road. Life will get tougher and tougher and he will begin to lose all things precious in life.
 
Many of us, when we are young, have no idea what we are bringing upon ourselves by using drugs and drinking alcohol. We have no idea of the long-term damage we are committing to ourselves. Sadly, when we are young, we haven’t suffered properly yet, but one thing parents can do to help their child suffer (counter-instinctual, I know, but necessary) is to remove things that help them not to suffer, remove things that make them comfortable and help keep them deluded about the effectiveness of using drugs. Remove all sources of comfort, be it time, love, money, etc. Keeping an addict comfortable is keeping him or her sick and therefore passively helping to kill them. Hate to be so blunt, but that’s the truth.
 
I will certainly pray hard for your son today, and I am very grateful to you for coming here and reading and sharing.

Comment:

THE ROOT TO OUR PROBLEM IS SELFISHNESS – this statement here sums things up perfectly, if only my recovering family member could see this. We have just endured watching and living through 8 years of his selfish meth addiction hell and now in his recovery he has decided to have a selfish affair with a married woman (replace one addiction with another) he is running around like a god dam teenager again & is in the process of stealing another mans family, for his own selfish benefit. When confronted about his behavior, he tells us “He doesn’t give a shit about the little kid or this ladies husband – Its good for him, what he wants, what he needs for his new life, so he’ll take it!!! He can’t understand why his family can barely look at him, the drug use has stopped but the selfishness is still running wild. His affair partner is now pregnant and has filed for divorce (much to his manipulating delight) he has succeed in breaking up a family. My question to you Charlie is “can his new life succeed when its based on so much selfishness? Or will his selfishness eventually destroy him?? After watching 8 years of selfish drug addiction and now another three years of selfish affair addiction, I am at the point of cutting him out of our lives forever and he can’t understand why! “I’m clean, why do you want me out of your life now he says” – Its simple “his selfishness disgusts me” & I have lost all respect for him as a person because of it.

Response:

Yes, one can certainly achieve ‘physical’ sobriety and be destroyed by his or her selfishness, and in fact, it happens frequently. Getting sober and hitting a few meetings amounts to nothing and is perhaps less than 1% of the work required to recover from the spiritual malady of addiction. Selfishness is a primary form of spiritual poison and one that can take someone down as quickly as drugs and alcohol themselves. The conduct which you describe is certainly as destructive and vile as meth use, if not more, as it harms so many others and creates vicious karmic triangles.
 
I’ve written before that drugs and alcohol are merely a sideshow. If we fail to change and grow along moral and spiritual lines, we have no chance to recover, to right our wrongs, and to become worthy once again. Believe me, I’m no example of this, but it is the truth.

We can simply refer to the Big Book for answers…
 
“Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible.” -Alcoholics Anonymous, p.62
 
Or the Bible…

“For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” James 3:16

 
“But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.” Romans 2:8
 
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:4
 
“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:3-4
 
“For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” 2 Timothy 3:2-4 

Also see, Don’t Ever Give Up, and the posts linked at the bottom of that post.

     Just to bear in mind, I am no less messed up than anybody else. I have simply recovered from thoughts or desires to drink, use or self-destruct. That’s it. Drugs and alcohol are no longer a problem for me and haven’t been since I gave my life to God and committed to a life of right action as opposed to wrong action. Specifically, the obsession was removed the moment after I read the 7th Step prayer. So when someone writes me about how ‘pretentious’ I am and how I write from my ‘spiritual hilltop’ (lol), I happily submit to you that I am just as much of a pathetic drug addict as you are, one that I’m sure many have to suffer the very presence of ;) 

Comment:

Charlie, I for one thank God that I found your blog. I thank you for your honesty. I wish there were more treatment centers like the one you went to instead of the bullshit ones that take our money and don’t give a shit about the people in the program. We’ve been through plenty of rehabs and I’ve never really met a single person working at one of them that cared. It’s always about the money. None live up to the claims they make on their websites. It’s sickening really. Sorry to vent, I’m having a bad day. I just found out that one of the friends my son made at AA is a weed dealer. He’s 60 yrs old and goes to meetings to get kids to sell for him. I’m so disgusted….with everything right now.

Response:

I thank God for you too. Breathe and let’s pray together.

I wish there were too, but ultimately we must be willing to do the work and grow in order to recover. As well, we must be willing to change and to believe that something Greater than ourselves can get us better. We must believe that we [alone] cannot get ourselves better. 

It is only when we let go of this veil of pride and this arrogance about being able to do anything that we feel true humility, which is the first step and from which we can go on to accomplish anything.

     Everyday millions of addicts go away to treatment and come home having only achieved physical sobriety. After a few tantrums, the doctors goes, “Yup, just as I imagined, he MUST have something else.” Um, no. The truth is that the addict was never treated beyond the superficial symptoms of drug addiction such as withdrawal and triggers (that don’t really exist). No one even bothers to think that maybe the addict utterly failed to work on themselves to any significant degree, namely, enough to restore them to sanity, exorcise the heaping pile of emotional/psychological filth, and rearrange guiding principles, attitudes and false beliefs that have driven them for years. If every lazy, whiny addict actually did that it would probably dissolve every other mental issue we’ve ever had. But that’s not what happens. Whoops.

Lol!

     Instead what happens is we go away to some garden variety treatment center, write down a few fabricated triggers, blame stuff on mom and dad, engage in some role play, hit a couple meetings and then come home. Do you see? Having only removed the substances, what you have left is an utterly miserable sober person who is still nuts and presenting with every skew they developed as a demented active drug addict/alcoholic.

     I have seen countless addicts who were slapped with all sorts of psychiatric gibberish recover completely. When the solution is comprehensive, the result is comprehensive. There is no dual-diagnosis because no other diagnosis would exist. Do you see? I was diagnosed with all kinds of DSM fantasies myself… until I actually did some work on myself, grew up a little bit and joined the world. I had a spiritual experience and that was that. The addiction, depression, anxiety, fear, add, bipolar, personality disorder, disorder not other wise specified… all of it. Gone.

      Unfortunately, however, psychiatrists today are diagnosing and prescribing to everything with pulse in an effort to push the sale of psychotropics to the public. Why? For one, they can’t think outside of the box they are trapped in. They only see the chemistry and the only thing they have to offer is to experiment with a bunch of powerful, untested designer drugs that rewire your brain in ways that can be frightening, if not lethal.

    
     So why do you suppose this is happening in America today? Why do you think so many believe in this dual-diagnosis hoax when it comes to addiction? And why do you think so many blindly follow the advice of some quack who has no clue about the nature of addiction and mental illness, let alone how to address it? Finally, perhaps we should do some thinking for ourselves and understand the pharmacology and action of these drugs on our neurochemistry before swallowing. These might be interesting questions to answer before we not just medicate and lobotomize every addict, but every man, woman and child on the entire planet.